December 19, 2014

Get ready for the mania of the latest update to Dungeons & Dragons Online: Update 24, Heart of Madness! Yalthoon the Mindflayer, and the Daelkyr demon lords, are back with their denizens of Xoriat in brand new adventures. They're determined to unhinge the world as we know it with their special brand of insanity!

New Adventure Pack!

The insane lords of Xoriat return in all new adventures! Return to the Sleeping Spell Inn for the ultimately excursion into madness with Terminal Delirium, and more zany Xoriat misadventures! For Level 18 (Heroic) / Level 26 (Epic). Free to VIPs!

New Free Tyranny of Dragons Adventure

Infiltrate the Cult of the Dragon to retrieve the legendary White Dragon mask for the Harpers, before the cultists can enact their devious plans for conquest. This dungeon is free for all players!

Barbarian Improvements

Barbarian enhancement trees have been updated and improved for better survivability!

Introducing: Glamered Weapon Auras!

There's a new way to customize your cosmetic appearances! The Mirror of Glamering now allows you to create cosmetic weapons.

Additionally, use the new Glamered Weapon Aura to add exclusive new visual effects to your cosmetic weapon. Learn more by clicking here

October 10, 2014

Armor up for the latest update to Dungeons & Dragons Online: Update 23, The Mark of Death! Battle the forces of the cunning lich Vol, and prevent her from invoking the ancient powers of a lost Dragonmark!

Armor Up!

Crush the forces of evil with a range of improvements to melee combat and the Paladin class! Shrug off damage in the heat of battle as it rolls off your shield and armor. Plow through enemies and deliver vicious shield attacks with the Vanguard Enhancement Tree, available for Paladins and Fighters!

Introducing: Harper Agent

Be a versatile operative with the new Harper Agent Enhancement Tree, available in the DDO Store and compatible with any class. Use your intelligence to master a variety of skills and abilities. Free for VIPs!

Epic Adventures

Defy the forces of the Emerald Claw, and face their terrible master, Erandis Vol. She's half dragon, half elf, and all lich! Epic level adventures have been added to the Necropolis, Part 4 adventure pack for CR 29-30! Free for VIPs!

Explore the lush landscape of the Epic Orchard of the Macabre, with new monsters to battle, new journals to uncover, and randomized encounters!

Confront the vampiric High Priest of Vol in Epic Desecrated Temple of Vol.

Stop the creation of Flesh Golems for the army of evil in Epic Flesh Maker's Laboratory!

Eliminate the Doomsphere ally in Epic Ghosts of Perdition.

Defeat a powerful Cinderspawn seeking to align with dark forces in Epic Inferno of the Damned.

Interrupt a terrible ritual that could bring about the power of the Dragonmark of Death in our brand new epic level raid, The Mark of Death.

Introducing: Mirror of Glamering

Like the way a particular armor or helmet looks? Use this magical mirror to make a cosmetic copy of it! You get to keep the original item, and the created cosmetic item is Bound to Account. Available in the DDO Store and Daily Dice.

Reviews

“this is the ultimate group game”
8/10 – Eurogamer“The goal of D&D Online: Stormreach was to recreate the heady thrill of a well-sculpted dungeon crawl in mom's basement, and to that end, Turbine has succeeded beyond expectations.”
– Worthplaying

About This Game

Enter a world of danger and adventure with Dungeons & Dragons Online®, the free, award-winning, massively-multiplayer online game based on the beloved RPG that started it all.

Key Features:

Experience the Best Action Combat of Any Free MMORPG: Take control in combat and make every move count. Leap past deadly blade traps or dodge poison arrows. Whether fighter, sorcerer, or rogue, every move is your move as you block, tumble, cleave, and more on your way to glory and power.

Play for Free: Experience the action, danger, and intrigue of Dungeons & Dragons Online for free! Play as much as you want all the way to level 20.
Exciting Adventures with Iconic D&D Monsters: Come face-to-face with a dragon, defend your sanity from a Mindflayer, or get roasted by a Beholder as you delve into the deepest and most treacherous dungeons ever imagined. Test your skill against a monstrous number of iconic Dungeons & Dragons foes in your pursuit of power and glory.

Adventure alone or with friends from all over the world: Set out on an adventure of your own, create a group with friends or join a guild to meet new people.

Create a Unique Hero: Craft the characters you’ve always wanted to play with deep character advancement that offers nearly infinite possibilities. With 8 races, 13 classes and nearly limitless traits and character abilities, it’s possible that no two characters may ever be the same!

A Rich & Beautiful World: Explore the sun-drenched, magic-powered city of Stormreach, the gathering place for countless DDO players from around the world any time of day or night. See the iconic locations of Dungeons & Dragons brought to life like never before! The world of DDO is yours for the taking.

Enhance Your Experience: Shop in the in-game store for extra quests, powerful gear, experience boosts, buffs, and more. You choose how little or how much you spend.

System Requirements

Windows

Mac OS X

Minimum:

OS:Windows® System XP SP2

Processor:P4 1.6 GHz or AMD equivalent with SSE

Memory:1 GB RAM

Graphics:64 MB Hardware T&L -compatible video card

DirectX®:9.0c

Hard Drive:11 GB HD space

Other Requirements:Broadband Internet connection

Additional:*Note: Due to potential game changes, the Minimum System Requirements for this game may change over time.

Recommended:

OS:Windows® System Vista64/Windows 7

Processor:Dual-core processor, such as the Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2

I decided to change my mind after the recent patch. I am recommending this game to everyone who enjoys very complex MMORPGs with endless content and endless character build possibilities.The game started out with great free content. A lot of pay to play content was added but everytime they update the game they always add new free content. You can earn everything without paying if you farm for turbine points(there are plenty of guides out there).If you want to jump right in with spending some money, go on their website and purchase the menace of the underdark complete expansion pack. That is all you need to buy with real money, with all the TP you earn buy vale of twilight and the necropolis 4 adventure packs.Just like other games they also have cool cosmetics you can purchase and some give you buffs.Guilds in the game get Boats/ships that soar through the skys and sometimes if you look up you can see them.

Compared to WoW they do have a druid class which has the most spells in the game.Everything in the game is rolled in realtime and the better gear you get improves rolls.Some of the named loot in this game will literally take years to obtain, so it is a very hardcore game.There are wilderness areas in the game so you don't have to spend all your time doing quests for experience.If anyone wants to or is already playing on Ghallanda join the steam group. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/DDOGLand

This is a fun game. However, it is far past its prime. The more they do to it the worse the game gets. They added a real money auction house (using astral shards, which you have to pay real money for or earn slowly by getting other people's paid-for astral shards by selling them stuff on it). The game lags terribly. The game has bugs almost as old as the game itself, and every new update gets worse. It just isn't worth your time nad money. I should know, I spent too much of both on it!

"stay close to the edge, don't go into the middle of the floor...", rapidly types our Cleric as we approach an apparently harmless room. But i read it to late. I've seen the sparkling chest nestled enticingly in an alcolve directly opposite our position and i rush towards it. Stupid. The floor collapses and i fall into the misty chamber below. There are bones strewn around the room and then suddenly an elite level scorpian erupts from the ground and immediately attacks me. The rest of my group - my guild mates - leap heroically into the chamber and we engage the beast together and manage to bring it down. "we can't get that chest now, there is no way back up", says the same Cleric. "sorry" i say, and imagine my character, head hung in shame, shuffling his feet. "no problem :)" says the Cleric. My Ranger searches the room and finds the lever that opens the chamber. A gloomy tunnel stretches into the distance. We heal up then move on.

This is what D&D Online is all about and when it is at its best. The game has a number of large open hub areas but the missions will almost certainly lead you underground into a dark cavern or muggy sewer. In the hubs you can find group members, hire mercernary's, prurchase healing scrolls and potions, and upgrade gear and equipment, before venturing into the dangers below. Some quests ask you to clear out an infestation of spiders/kobolds/etc, normlly with larger, more dangerous boss type near the end, whilst others may ask you to rescue a merchant's daughter or find a precious artifact. Throughout these dungeons there is the possibility of finding rare monsters with epic loot, normally only found by finding a hidden door or secret area, but only if you or one of your group has the riht skills. This is a game that rewards exploration, that encourages group play, and grabs wholeheartdly at that inner fantasy nerd that exists in so many of us.

As a solo experience this is a lesser game. You can clear same level content no problem, even an elite dungeon or two with the right equipment and merc's, but the exprience feels lonely and more shallow on your own.

The game truely shines as a multiplayer experience, which, to be fair, is exactly how the game is intended to be.

I can over look the aged graphics and tired engine for the wonderful frill of descending into the deaths of an undead crypt with a group of likeminded advnturers. Most stuff is decided on invisible dice rolls and armor/will saves just like (almost) the tabletop game, but the combat has a degree of twitch and you can dodge incoming attacks with a well timed double tap. When you find a loot chest automtic rolls take place and loot is devidied up accordingly but you can transfer items to another group member if you want to.

The community is very friendly and I was soon in a really helpful high level guild (this brings loads of perks to experience gains and buffs) and there nevr seems to be shortage of people to go questing with.

Much like LOTRO the whole game is F2P with the need to buy quest packs for additonal content or unlocks for certain race/class types. It is fair to say that you will likely need to pnd a few quid t some point to advance th whole experience but the good thing is this can be done at your leisure and if you done wan to then, well, dont.

I for one applaud this style of F2P model and for a game that provides this much AAA fun I had not issue with spending money on it - i just purchased all of the DLC for just over £14 in the sale and thats good value by any standard.

If you like D&D, fantasy, and group style play then i can highly recommend this game. If you don't or are looking for another WOW style experience then keep looking. D&D online isnt trying to be WOW or Guildwars and I am glad of that.

As an fantasy adventure maker this game is top notch and you should certainly give it a whirl - 8.8/10

As a fan of Dungeons & Dragons since I first learned to play from my Uncle when I was young I was excited to play this online addaptation of the classic Paper/Pencil Tabletop game. With that said please allow me to give you my sincere opinion on this game as a fan of the D&D tabletop franchise as well as a big time MMO player.

The classic D&D atmosphere is here and the story can be interesting as long as you read the text and follow your missions

The classes and races have the potential to be fun to play but not all of them are available unles you pay for the game or use hardearned ingame credit to buy them.

Partying up with friends and/or family to play is a lot of fun but not solo (why play a multiplayer game to be alone)

The community seems friendly enough so far but I will have to continue to play some more before I judge anything to much.

There are a few lag/glitch issues to be careful of (i.e. My cousin and My Uncle were playing with me and an enimies Debuff blinded our entire party but when the spell wore off of the rest of them my screen was still all black from the spell. Funny at first though it quickly turned to a major anoyance that eventually pissed me off to the point where the game was no longer fun and I quit.) I have run into a few other bad ones like that on my own and in parties but most are small and not game changing.

I am going to recommend this game to fans of fanasy based games and to people new to D&D but for those of you who have played the Paper/Pencil game stick to it...there is way more oppertunity to be creative with your Character as well as the world and story you play in. And for those of you playing other MMOs there are better ones out there than this one but if you have not already been sucked into another one this may be a great place to start.

5.5/10 on Gameplay3/10 on Content (6/10 if you are a paying member)7/10 on Story

-graphics-it's actually massivelly pay to play. It's basically unplayable without vip status (15/month)-dead game, dead community+amazing skill trees, allows for all sorts of flavour builds, probably more than any other mmo+what remains of the community is p chill+game is mostly instanced, so the adventures/quests are much more interesting than your average mmos+mountains of voice acting if you have vip

The best way to play this game would be two people getting membership and dicking around with builds and doing coop. Don't go into this game solo or if spending 15-30 dollars a month is too much.

Across steam and my normal play i've only got around 1,000 hours in the game but I really enjoyed it.

If your a big fan of fantasy RPG this is the grandaddy of them all, you will need lots of time to fully enjoy, im at over 3000 hours and still loving it. the biggest draw for me is that it has no end. If your the kind of player that enjoys the journey this is for you.

A fantastic take on DDO based in Eberron lore, They recently tied it in with the Forgotten Realms with the Underdark Adventure Pack. Very in depth character creation stats wise. Not very many options to customize your toons look though. All bodies are the same pretty much. Definitely some of the best dungeon crawls and seasonal events. not much in the way of pvp though. Highly recommended.

First off, the Mac client has some serious technical problems. It wouldn't even install on my system (OS X 10.9.5), apparently due to some problems with the third-party downloader...which I don't see a reason for even including, given that Steam downloads all 8 GB worth of game content anway. So I haven't been able to run it at all in Steam, but the Windows version runs fine in Wineskin.

GOOD:- The game captures a surprising amount of the feel of actually playing D&D. There's DM narration during quests, a lot of the mechanics from the tabletop game are included, and you have to do more than just kill monsters. There are spot checks to find hidden doors, traps to avoid, NPCs to bluff and even some puzzles to solve.

- Soloing is supported more than in most MMOs.

- Most of the game content is instanced: the only public areas are the towns, and most of the quests take place in instanced areas with a linear narrative. As a result, there are way fewer "kill 20 zebras" or "collect 10 rocks" quests than you might expect in an MMO.

- It's free, so if you hate it, you're not out anything more than the couple hours it takes to download.

- There are a TON of options for building a character (three trees per class and multiclassing), although several classes are behind pay walls.

BAD:- The graphics and interface are really dated, and the voice acting is pretty bad.

- The player base is small.

- The downside of the character customization freedom and the jillions of different numbers brought over from the tabletop game is that the mechanics are really complicated. I imagine (I haven't gotten anywhere near endgame) that optimizing a character for raiding would be REALLY hard.

- There's a lot of pay-wall stuff that pops up right out of the gate. Want to have more than two characters? Pay up. Want to play a monk? Pay up. Want to res after you die? Pay up.

love it, it has great rpg mechanics and does not confine you to a linier story line. it conjures up memories of when i played D&D and it also remindes me of my warcraft days but well im still playing that. definatly download it because it is worth it. it is free to play but there are extra mechanics you could buy including classes, pets, titles, and best of all, ♥♥♥♥ing airships.

Bottom line (at the top): It's ok, I'd recommend it because I enjoy it, but you need to be able to see through the WoW-ification of a decent D&D game.

I've got mixed feelings about this game, perhaps that's why I keep coming back to it. Essentially what happens is every 2 or 3 months Turbine releases an update that either completely alters the gameplay experience or breaks 3 or 4 old quests (or both), and they slowly hotfix about 50-75% of it (I've seen a Level 2 quest that's been around since before I started playing being unavailable for an ENTIRE update period!), and then they release a new update. As for gameplay, it's ok as far as D&D-based TPHSMMORPGS's go.

Lack of proper support and lousy management decisions aside, the community is good, the fanbase is awesome and there's something to do for every non-epic level (1-20) without having to pay for anything.

If you like D&D-based games that have gone off-track a little (think in the direction of WoW), this may be the time sink you need. Otherwise, there's tons of other (more populated) MMO's that might suit your fancy.

I absolutely love this game, but it a lot more fun with at least one other person of similar time investment.

+you can play through 90% of content solo or with one other player. You can increase the difficulty (and rewards) with additional people.+instances mean no kill stealing or reward hogging, so much better than open-world click-fests.+omg, the character building. there's so much fun to be had putting together a character of 10+ races and 12 classes, and you can mix up to 3 classes on each character. Self-healing combat wizard with trapping ability? Sure. +traps and secret doors abound. you'll miss a bit of this if you zerg through (see below), but it's a lot of fun to work through for the first few times per instance.+while content has been recycled rather than created, the character options are coninuing to grow, especially for melees.+you get an incredible amount of game for $9.99 a month.

-it's so old and desperate for players that easy mode is a lot of places: guild buffs, hirelings, and some pay-to-win options.-power creep was inevitable, but it can be pretty absurd at times comparing similarly-leveled characters of newer plyers and vets; as a result, most content is sped through at its highest difficulty in pugs, and it can be difficult for newer players to contribute or even keep up.

I hope that 74 hours alongside some very good and enamored friends was enough to give this game a fair shake, but ultimately I just can't really recommend it.

The game is an attempt to be a semi-faithful recreation of the 3.5 D&D experience, although unlike, say, the old Neverwinter Nights, the game adds some concessions to MMO playability between things like talent trees and the fact that you get Spell Points instead of myriad slots. The concept is set in Eberron, which is a kind of high-magic crystal-punk sort of setting, and the game is played almost entirely through instanced dungeon work.

There are reasons that D&D is not played in realtime, and this game demonstrates exactly why. An instant save-or-die death spell on the tabletop can have a dramatic buildup leading the clattering of that 20-sided die; in a realtime game, you just die suddenly for no readily apparent reason, which engenders neither tension nor "what could I have done better" counterplay thoughts so much as it simply engenders stunned contempt. The same can go for high end blast spells and traps, many of which can kill characters instantly.

They'll often do so with little more than a 'klick,' too, because the sound assets in this game are the poorest I've heard outside bad indie games. Your mighty two-handed sword will do little more than sort of lightly 'dink' while it slices a devastating critical hit through a gnoll; your entire team can be killed by a sonic trap that strongly reminds one of a rather shy doorbell, while, conversely, the discovery of secret doors leads to a deafening CLUNK that overshadows the din of any battle. The upshot is that there's no feel of impact to pitched melee battles. The music has been added to in the many expansions, but never replaced, meaning the early-game music is poor and repetitive.

Between that and lacklustre animations, the combat - which is what you will be spending the overarching majority of your time in Stormreach doing, this being a fantasy MMO - feels weak and ephemeral. By aiming for a more quasirealistic if colorful fantasy look, the character art assets might have been good in 2006, but have not aged wonderfully. While I hate to contrast to WoW, WoW's cartoonier style certainly helped preserve its original, dated models for a longer functional time; these assets currently sleep at the bottom of the uncanny valley.

The dungeons are pains to navigate, the quest UI is poor to nonfunctional, power (even if not strictly necessary power) is sold via the game's microtransaction system in the form of stat-boosting Tomes and field self-revives.

Is there anything positive to say? A little. The game does, unlike many MMOs, have more comprehensible mechanics to those experienced with the D&D 3.5 system, and so it's easier to see what's going on under the hood. The game also manages to successfully break the Holy Trinity (tank/healer/DPS) so prevalent in many other MMOs with a very fluid and diverse class system. Character customizability always was a strength of D&D 3.0/3.5, and that’s unquestionably present. The Dungeon Master, a voice who narrates things your character is ostensibly experiencing, is a welcome nod to the tabletop.

Outside of that, though, it’s hard to recommend it, even to fans of the D&D 3.5 system. Fantasy adventures are not in short supply at the moment, and it’s probably best to seek them elsewhere.

It was good at first. Then it all went downhill once the second expansion came out.It hurts me to play it, because I realize how alive and good it once was.Doesn't help that the content-purchase system here is much more greedy than in LotRO. At least the content was reasonably priced there and you could get Turbine Points rather easily...I've played since 2011, quitting for a while after each time I true reincarnated. The content is enjoyable at first, but can get repetitive quickly, especially if you're on later lives and need more exp. Balance is... out of whack, and has been...There's more of a focus on soloing now, as many players have quit in the last few years, and most servers are lacking in population, at least from what I've seen. At least the character creation is very extensive. I've always liked that.

Not your average skill-spamming auto-attacking MMORPG because this one usualy requires thought before action. Definetely reccommended for bored-of-the-usual-MMO gamers and people willing to get into MMORPG's ;)

This was the pinnacle of MMORPG for me several years ago. I recently started again, and it's still just as good.

If you thought WoW was good, then this is the free-er, better-looking, more fun version of it. The loot system is fun. The fact that it rolls for certain activities just like regular DnD is amazing. Play this game. It is worth the $0.

It's DND with out the books and the game is the DM, dice roll's done in a flash and the game plays like a real time RPG action, but its totaly the original paper game, its awsome! I know this sounds hard to belive but its true. this is classic pen and paper DnD the Video Game MMO.